Sustainable Crawfish Farming in Louisiana: Strategies to Promote Crawfish Production

Abstract

This study is used to describe sustainable crawfish farming in the state of Louisiana, and to also suggest some key strategies to help the state of Louisiana to promote crawfish production. It is an undeniable fact that the Louisiana Crawfish production over the years has been produced from wild habitats, mainly from the Atchafalaya River basin, which seems to be a factor of seasonality. Following the statistics of the total Crawfish production by Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board, it was underscored that more than 100 million pounds of crawfishes were produced. Out of the 100 million capacity of crawfishes produced annually, approximately 82 million pounds of crawfishes were obtained from regular crawfish farms and more than 18 million pounds of crawfishes were harvested from natural habitats by the activities of approximately 1,600 fishermen. Surprisingly, the crawfish industry employs about 7,000 people directly or indirectly and injects $300 million into the state's economy each year. Therefore, the sustainability of this industry will continue to generate sustainable employment, and reliable revenue to support the state’s project. The study adopted a cross-sectional data collection procedure to sample 250 crawfish farmers in the State of Louisiana with the help of Cluster random sampling technique. The study was modeled after Ranganathan et al. (2017) and Robinson (2018) analysis and interpretation of Logistic regression model to estimate the strategic determinants of sustainable crawfish production in Louisiana. The study revealed that the engagement/involvement of crawfish farmers' in the productive and efficient system of production in the State of Louisiana (such as productive cage system) will remain an important driver of sustainable crawfish growth. The study further revealed the following fishing production strategies as sustainable for the crawfish growth based on the farmers perception and understanding: crawfish health management, genetically improved crawfish strains, more affordable quality feeds, human capacity development and extension services, as well as policy and public investment support for crawfish production. The study recommended that the Louisiana State government and the other key stakeholders should continuously invest in technology and transfers that will aid in sustainable crawfish production, and to also focus beyond the farm by strengthening the implementation of policy and public investment support for crawfish farming. These strategies will go a long way to generate more sustainable employment, and revenue to ensure growth in Louisiana. Keywords : Sustainability, Strategies, Production, Natural and Wild-Habitats, Employment, Logistic Regression, Revenue, Crawfish, Seafood, Aquaculture, and Fishing DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/13-2-02 Publication date: March 31 st 2023